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A triple-threat tale

Actually, I first became aware of A Game of Thrones in its excellent board game version. It turned me on to the book, which quickly turned me on to the rest of the A Song of Ice and Fire series that George R. R. Martin was writing. I even signed up for HBO so I could watch the film version of Thrones, which was every bit as wowing as the book.

Martin is definitely not your father’s Tolkien. He’s much grittier. Lots of bad things happen to lots of good people. There’s so much sex, violence and treachery that you could think the series was written with HBO in mind. The latest book, A Dance with Dragons, has been such a hit that the library has purchased additional copies, for a total of 34. A recent blog post credits Martin with leading a trend toward more realism in the fantasy fiction genre.

The problem is that Martin is 63 years old, and it took him five years to write the fourth book and six years to finish Dragons. There are supposed to be seven books in the series. There are multitudes wishing Mr. Martin a long life.